Facebook Goes Ahead With Policy Changes Today After 'Minimal' Vote

Facebook on Tuesday announced that after holding a site-wide voting opportunity for all 1.01 billion of its users, in which than less 1 percent participated, it will be going ahead and updating its terms of service and data use policy to end future voting by users and to allow Facebook to combine and use more user data from Facebook and Instagram (among other changes). As Facebook's VP of public policy and marketing Elliot Schrage wrote in a blog post on Facebook's Site Governance page Tuesday:

An external auditor has reviewed and confirmed the final results. Of the 668,872 people who voted, 589,141 recommended we keep our existing SRR and Data Use Policy. We made substantial efforts to inform our users and encourage them to vote, both through emails and their news feeds. Despite these efforts and widespread media coverage, less than one percent of our user community of more than one billion participated. As stated in both policies, the results are advisory unless more than 30% of users vote...

Schrage went on to note that despite the "minimal" participation in the voting period, which ended Monday, Facebook is going ahead with the changes, effective today, although Schrage said the company did take user opinions and feedback into account when revising its proposed new policy updates to the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Data Use Policy. He continued:

For example, we added new language to clarify our proposed updates on sharing information with our affiliates and our privacy controls. After considering these factors, we have decided to adopt the proposed updates to our SRR and Data Use Policy.